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Played some more Hearthstone. I've reached rank 16 or so after a few good games, but I'm getting quite fed up with all the spells. From secrets that deal massive damage to all minions, to ignoring all forms of Taunt, working at the moment of casting as opposed to the next turn, to all kinds of other shenanigans that seem to massively disadvantage minions.

Spells have a utility and initiative factor that (most) minions don't, but they often lose out in card advantage. Powerful spells like fireball and polymorph at best trade 1 for 1, while minions have the potential for better trades, and continous damage to the opponent if they stick on the board. Board clearing spells can of course get massive value, but most classes have a very limited amount of them, so you can learn to play around them by not playing all of your minions even if you theoretically could, prioritizing trades over filling the board on the turn before they are likely to hit (turn 7 flamestrike is a big one for mage) and trying to have some minions with high health that will survive the board clear. Minions like harvest golem and the new nerubian egg are also good against board clears, as well as all minions with divine shield.

Shenanigans is the name of the game of course, but one of the most powerful decks at the moment is the warlock "zoo" deck which plays minions almost exclusively (they often run soulfire and sometimes one or two other spells). The warlock hero power means that you don't have to trade as efficiently as your opponent since you often draw 2 cards per turn. You swamp the board with cheap minions and overwhelm the enemy. It's become even better with the expansion cards (haunted creeper and nerubian egg, specifically), and is all over the ladder right now.

Honestly, I don't even know what I'm doing or suppose to be doing in E.Y.E: I Masturbate to Science. Aside from almost everyone in the game looks like they're Chaos SM scum, it looks pretty snazzy. I'm trying very hard to grasp whatever's happening in this game even after 90 minutes of playtine but I suppose I should give it another go

It's obscure. It takes about 3 or 4 playthroughs with branching storypaths to figure out what's happening and even then it's not exactly clear. The ruleset on the other hand is classic RPG stuff. You need to have this many stats to do that. Mostly weapons and implants have a stat requirement. You can read up on that in the shops in the temple. Hacking and PSI is basically worthless without substantial stat investment.

Quickstart:
Grab Cloaking Implant, not to sneak but to reposition
Grab Elephant Killer Pistol or something else with armor piercing rounds
You're a demigod, you start off godly and only get stronger

I dunno, this mod adds some cool stuff but it takes away a lot too. In both vanilla XCOMs you have a really fluid gameplay with a limited but working set of tools to approach any situation. There wer flaws of course, like the fact that sending someone to flank or attack enemy from behind was way too dangerous because trigering another group of enemies could create an unwinnable situation. Or the fact that game was hard only until you leveled up a sniper or two, then it became easy and very repetitve even on Impossible Ironman. Basically only few things were worthy, everythiung else useless. In this mod some things are done to make firefights longer, cover is much better and accuracy is lower, also six people from the start. But maps are the same, it's hard to find cover for all your team. Some abilities are weird. Stedy weapon doesn't work with overwatch? Why? Because it would be overpowered? Strategic layer is a mess, no offence to modders, devs are to blame for strategic layer and it's failures, but mods took it and make it more complex and less comperhensive( same with UI, why change soldier stats screen?). Countries are leaving without explanations, everyone spams me with requests, battleship UFO appeared in first battle. Good job. Feels very 90-ish it does, when devs threw things together withought much thinking.

It's obscure. It takes about 3 or 4 playthroughs with branching storypaths to figure out what's happening and even then it's not exactly clear. The ruleset on the other hand is classic RPG stuff. You need to have this many stats to do that. Mostly weapons and implants have a stat requirement. You can read up on that in the shops in the temple. Hacking and PSI is basically worthless without substantial stat investment.

Quickstart:
Grab Cloaking Implant, not to sneak but to reposition
Grab Elephant Killer Pistol or something else with armor piercing rounds
You're a demigod, you start off godly and only get stronger

To expand on that: You generally want to have two, MAYBE three guns at a time. An assault rifle/sniper rifle for range (the ARs are accurate enough to snipe with), Deckard's pistol for close up ultra-violence (and things you will face later), and MAYBE a melee weapon (I like the Damocles for story purposes, and it annihilates folks). Then just grab a health pack (once you unlock it) and a shit-ton of ammo. Good job, you can handle basically anything.

Also, always research, but at the lowest possible cost. They provide great benefits (stats or items) and even the lowest cost goes rather quickly

Beyond that, pick one path for your character and level-up accordingly (I like to shoot things, so I focus on survivability and gun usage). That should let you complete one iteration of the game. After that, start experimenting with other stuff

But, at the end of the day, it is a lot like the older tactical shooters (funny enough): You have a limited amount of ammo (you probably won't find ammo outside of the restocks), so make every shot count. Which is why I love EYE so much. You get a nice "lock and load montage" every time you go to a closet, and the game really encourages you to take a knee and fire in controlled bursts on the giant hordes of monsters coming to rape your face.

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

The most common criticism levelled against Sengoku is that it's not as good as Crusader Kings-- but I love Crusader Kings, so that sounds a little bit like a complaint that langostini aren't as good as lobster. So I threw more money at Paradox (hey at least it wasn't a music DLC).

Finished a replay of Splinter Cell: Double Agent. It's not the best SC game, but it's okay. Chaos Theory and Pandora Tomorrow blow it out of the water though.

I moved on to The Sims 2 + all expansions, that I picked up for free on Origin. The whole Sims phenomenon mostly passed me by when those games first came out, and I more or less expected to be bored of it after an hour or so. I actually find it quite compelling, even though I'm not doing anything spectacular. I created two sims and a cat and built a simple home for them, and suddenly I had played all afternoon. What I find remarkable about the game is that it was wildly popular with a more "casual" crowd, while the game isn't that easy to play. Some of the game's mechanics are quite obscure and not explained very well.
The long load times are annoying me though. Not sure how long I'll end up playing The Sims 2, but it seems like a nice break between more serious games so far.

I moved on to The Sims 2 + all expansions, that I picked up for free on Origin. The whole Sims phenomenon mostly passed me by when those games first came out, and I more or less expected to be bored of it after an hour or so. I actually find it quite compelling, even though I'm not doing anything spectacular.

Great, now I want to install it too just see how it is to have a cat... in a videogame. Just like you I've never really played a The Sims game before (gave the first one a couple of minutes at a friend's house ages ago) but am intrigued by the stories that may emerge out of this sandbox. Damn, and I was so proud making progress with my backlog.

I moved on to The Sims 2 + all expansions, that I picked up for free on Origin. The whole Sims phenomenon mostly passed me by when those games first came out, and I more or less expected to be bored of it after an hour or so. I actually find it quite compelling, even though I'm not doing anything spectacular. I created two sims and a cat and built a simple home for them, and suddenly I had played all afternoon. What I find remarkable about the game is that it was wildly popular with a more "casual" crowd, while the game isn't that easy to play. Some of the game's mechanics are quite obscure and not explained very well.

I had a partner who played Sims 2, so I've seen a good lot of it (and was pretty impressed by the cats), but when I tried it, it I also found it quite a lot harder than expected (my partner always cheated and gave herself a bunch of money. I didn't want to cheat and that was perhaps my mistake; I suspect it might be a lot more enjoyable when you do).

I spent a surprisingly long time playing Sims 3, though. I didn't expect it to grab me, but it was just pleasant in some way.

Great, now I want to install it too just see how it is to have a cat... in a videogame. Just like you I've never really played a The Sims game before (gave the first one a couple of minutes at a friend's house ages ago) but am intrigued by the stories that may emerge out of this sandbox. Damn, and I was so proud making progress with my backlog.

My GF absolutely loves cats, and she adored the digital cat that I created. You get to choose from about 10 or 15 species of cats and you can customize their print and colour. The catlike behaviour my digital feline friend exhibits is hilarious, it really acts like a real cat would (scratching furniture, sleeping on my sims' bed, jumping on chairs, racing around the house, meowing for food). The animations of your sims playing with the cat are very cute too. If I'm honest, just watching the cat is already worth downloading the game.

Yay, finally finished Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl (Complete Mod) after what felt an eternity. Lovely game, although the final area got dragged out a bit too long for my tastes. Shooting grey men in front of a grey backdrop isn't the most fun I've ever had, but damn, the view from the top of the sarcophagus is awesome. Also: Fuck helicopters.

Played through the first four Blackwell games over a couple of weeks. Playing them in close succession, it's fascinating to see the evolution from "This is from the folks who made Resonance?" to "This is fantastic" across four chapters, and how it's clearly down to Gilbert growing not just as a game designer, but as a writer.

Got Arkham Origins cheap despite the reviews. 8 hours in and I feel like this is what Arkham City should have been. Gotham is wonderfully designed (decrepit and cozy, sprawling and claustrophobic), the mook chatter is actually good enough to eavesdrop on, and it just feels properly dark like a story about an endless turf war between insane millionaires in a corrupt city should feel. Too bad they couldn't quite break free of certain traditions, though. Oh look it's the Joker because of course it is, and oh hey he's voiced by a Discount Mark Hamill because we've forgotten he could sound like anyone else... like literally anyone else because he's not a real person. I'm certain it'll jump the shark at some point but til then, it's great to wind down with.

I started my annual Escape Velocity: Nova playthrough last night at about 1am, after reminiscing about old Mac games of my youth (specifically Marathon, Descent('s shareware demo), Myst and Escape Velocity) with a random person from another forum. Man, I love this game. I wish GOG or someone would pick it up though as Ambrosia are still selling it at $30. I can't imagine they've had any sales since maybe 2006 as it's from 2002. It's basically a streamlined, isometric 2.5D X-like, I never played Elite but I imagine it's also similar to that given how Elite: Dangerous seems to be EV:N 3D Online.

I even started making a spreadsheet to calculate my potential trading profits and how much cash I need to fill additional escort freighters (if you miscalculate you can end up having an escort desert you with a hold full of cargo so you end up with no money and no cargo).

Successfully snuck into all the towers and killed all of the bots with the turrets at LaGuardia and it only took me two reloads to do it. It normally takes me three which is great because this is the first point in the game where I can tell if I'm going to have a good time or if I should just quit and go play something else. The second point is the super tanker and the third is probably the gas station rescue mission. If I do well at one point then I'll keep doing well until the next and so on but if I screw up at any of those then that's the rest of the game gone and it happens every single time I play. It's difficulty level independent too, I can't explain it.

Let's ignore that I was screwing up right from the start the last time I played I don't know what the hell was happening there.

Discovering a Xenonauts campaign, jumped into an Ironman on the second hardest difficulty since I expected it to be like the original. At first it seemed combat was far easier than in X-COM but I found alien bases and large UFO missions are quite brutal with the large amount of cover available which aliens seem very happy to use.

It caught me by surprise that you can't manufacture for profit in Xenonauts so I think I messed up by expanding a second base too early. I've now lost all the Americas and am one lost nation away from defeat. I'm ashamed to admit I used task manager to quit the game when I lost five medal-bedecked super soldiers to a single plasma grenade (yes, I was weak) but it turns out in Ironman the game autosaves every combat turn so it was for naught - my poor lethal darlings! I'm glad of it anyway since it looks now there's a chance I'll stabilize the rest of the world and pull through.

Air combat mini game is a bit wonky. I'll use it when fighting a single UFO since the AI will stupidly lock onto a single one of your aircraft for the entire combat making it easy to bait with one and pummel with the other without getting hit. With mutliple UFOs it's a chore with results based mostly on the random direction facing at the start of the minigame and is best auto-resolved.

It's basically a streamlined, isometric 2.5D X-like, I never played Elite but I imagine it's also similar to that given how Elite: Dangerous seems to be EV:N 3D Online.

Close on paper, but very different feel AFAICT. I've mainly played EV and Elite clones, very little EV (none for practical purposes) and never had any chance to get the Elites back in the day.

Everything is easier and smoother in 2D; Elite-likes felt more sim-like to me, e.g. stuff like docking manually in a 3D space.

Played a couple hours of Burnout Paradise Ultimate. I gave it a try a few years and put it down very quickly I don't even remember why. The handling is a bit meh (Trackmania must've spoiled me), but on the pad it's serviceable and it helps all the roads are so huge. My first impression was: hey where's the story? It felt strangely hollow.

Then I simply played: mindlessly and aimlessly, a realization started forming; the real protagonist is the city (and to a lesser extent, to me, the vehicles). They built a place that is functional to the game experience, it's not as 'textured' and complicated as the GTA cities or SRIII (that one always confused me, it always looked kind of same-y), but there's something in it, almost like has a personality of its own. I remember feeling something similar while playing GTAIII for the first time.

Played through the first four Blackwell games over a couple of weeks. Playing them in close succession, it's fascinating to see the evolution from "This is from the folks who made Resonance?" to "This is fantastic" across four chapters, and how it's clearly down to Gilbert growing not just as a game designer, but as a writer.

Ok I know you wrote "the folks" but let me point out once again that the writer/designer on Resonance is an entirely different person: Blackwell is 100% Dave Gilbert, Resonance is probably 90% Vince XII. The contribution of the Gilberts has mainly to do with cutting down and streamlining or that was the impression I derived from their commentary (Resonance had a much bigger scope and even more ambition, but eventually that was forsaken in favor of finally getting the game out of the door - which I think plays a part in the disappointment some people get from it)

That is fitting, however, as Gilbert has a gift that has been well described by Mr Cobbett: his writing is very economical, minimalist I think he called it.

If you want to see "the guy who made Blackwell" instead check out The Shivah, if you haven't already. It's pretty short - 2 hours maybe? as originally it was made for a monthly compo, but quite enoyable (under some respects I'd like more than the Blackwells), and/or you can read Richard's thoughts about it, those are very interesting too.

Oh and if you haven't played it, my favorite (thought not Richard's) Wadjet branded game for the time being is probably Primordia. It's basically the only game among the ones mentioned here that had an actual writer on it.